W.H.WILLIAMS (spennymoor)

When I started these posts about our Breakdown trucks & vehicle maintenance I had thought it would be in three parts, however as I start writing part four, I realise to tell the full story I am going to have to go into 5.
The story so far tells of how Eddie Thornton had left Adams & Gibbons the Main Vauxhall-Bedford agency to join us in a similar position, and how we had met Tom Liddle who ran his Removals Haulage business T.T Liddle Stanley with 16 completely identical Bedford TK Luton vans & a brand new TK tipper chassis which was purpose built into a breakdown truck and hardly ever used.
Over the years we had built a new additional workshop (as with all our buildings 15 ft height clearance) with two 65-foot bays with full length fully fitted pits, which enabled full artic tractor plus 40-foot trailers to pull in & fitters to have full access underneath from front bumper to trailer rear.
Between this and our existing workshops which had been designed with 40ft pits for rigids we built a 3,000 sq. foot vehicle parts stores where we employed a very capable spares manager, Terry Ford to run and operate a Kalamazoo stock system, backed up by everything purchased by suppliers requiring an order form signed by a director. In todays value our spares department housed over £100,000 of vehicle parts.
We built further down the site at the side of the new workshop a new concrete apron to accommodate a new Automatic Wilcomatic Vehicle wash like a giant car wash that could wash a full artic (tractor & trailer) front top sides & rear in less than 10 minutes.
In front of the spares department where our original washing bay had been Crissops who were a Spennymoor business who specialised in Welding and metalwork had built a very large ramp that our vehicles could pull up onto for steam cleaning the chassis & underside.
Even with all this our vehicle servicing was not working in synk. Eddie Thornton was without doubt very qualified at his job & at a main dealership where time was not at a premium excellent at his job, but in a haulage operation where time is prime, and we couldn’t afford vans and their drivers standing outside on the tarmac waiting to go into our workshops to have jobs done. I cannot understand when hauliers don’t have their own workshop with the work under their own control & giving away a huge percentage of their profit to Vehicle dealerships.
The problem was solved that we advertised for a Fleet engineer and Eddie Thornton was moved into the Transport Office where he worked as a liaison between the Traffic department and the workshops, to ensure vehicles were available when required for servicing. He also was excellent at seeing mechanics were paid the correct time for the jobs they did, based on Manufacturers times, which served as an incentive/bonus scheme that rewarded them for quick work. Another duty he took over was dealing with insurance assessors in negotiating our repair fees when Coachskill Ltd our other company repaired our vehicles involved in accidents or did outside work, ensuring we got the maximum return for our work. About 1985 Eddie took early retirement after suffering a major heart attack but I believe in retirement he lived to his mid-eighties.
The chap we appointed as fleet engineer was Alan Henderson from Hartlepool, and although he was not popular with most of our drivers for his attitude telling them ‘Let it develop, when they heard a strange noise, he did certainly shake things up & sort out our vehicle maintenance. His first suggestion that was immediately adopted by my dad & myself was to introduce a night shift 4 x 12-hour shifts per week 2 qualified mechanics & 1 semi qualified, 8PM to 8AM. Their jobs were to inspect 6 vehicles per night for defects. They did not have to do any repairs just vehicle servicing & inspection. Obviously small defects like light bulbs were replaced.
When Alan Henderson came in at 8.AM as the night shift was finishing he could review ay defects and decide if they needed immediate attention, & if so they were held back from leaving until repaired by day shift or booked in on their return, so we suffered the minimum off-road time. By this time, we had 50 plus trailers which were dealt with by dayshift as they often sat around waiting for tractor units & drivers. As I said Alan Henderson’s ‘Let it develop’ attitude annoyed drivers as often when they broke down they wold say ‘I told him about that months ago & it was left till it developed & I broke down’ As I said strange during the few months we only had the Scammell as breakdown truck, we never had a breakdown.
Meanwhile at T. T. Liddle during the late 60s Tom sold out to P & O their Company Storemasers. He was to remain as General Manager. He invited us over & showed us two new Bedford TK lutons they had bought and showed us a massive new warehouse they were building on their site. We had a chat & bought two of his original TKs. It must have been before Courtaulds opened in Spennymoor as we would have used them on their work, but they were too low & a little small for a lot of our work. We painted them in our livery (How I wised I had photographed them In TT Liddle livery then ours as they were symbolic vehicles. At the time they were older than anything we were running, but Tom’s maintenance was perfect & whenever a driver returned to his yard if there was nothing to do they were handed a paint brush & told to paint either the wheels or inside the body. The paint inside Cream sides & roof & grey floors were an inch thick. I cannot remember selling these vans or where they went but we only kept them about a year.
Not long later we went across again & Tom had packed in as he could not stand how P & O worked. He had bought himself a little Bedford CF pick up & had builders building him a new bungalow which was up the bank n Stanley, overlooking his old site. P & O had given him time to move out of his original bungalow as they were converting it into offices. Tom was totally immersed with this building work & when he invited us to see his new bungalow it could go straight into Home & Gardens. One feature was two huge kitchens. One brand new & just for show & the second containing all units & appliances from his old bungalow, which was the kitchen they used day to day.
Once the bungalow was built like many ex hauliers with no business, Tom was bored to death & so bought out Lewins Removals Stanley (see photos). He had negotiate transport for The Clover Can Company at Castleside near Consett. Happy & full of himself back in business again. Dad must have mentioned the story of our Scammell breakdown & how it only would do 19 mph & he said. ‘Would you like to buy mine?’ He took us down to a workshop he had for Lewins Removals (It appeared to be an old Chappell, quite large & it might have been Blackhall) & inside still painted in T.T. Liddle livery was his breakdown with about 2,000 miles on the clock. We snatched his hand off.
So, we had an almost new Bedford TK breakdown. I was given the job of selling the Scammell & quickly did so to the famous North East Showman Colin Noble and I later heard about three weeks after he bought it from us was The Town Moor Fare at Newcastle which was the biggest touring fare in Europe, and during the ten days on Newcastle’s Town moor it never stopped raining, and everyone was bogged down & Colin made twice what he paid for the scammell pulling everyone off the muddy grass.
I often was asked why we never had kept the Scammell & used it on Commecial Vehicle ralleys . I thoroughly enjoyed my drive from Watford Gap in the Scammell. It was an experience I can remember to this day, but I never could have imagined wanting to spend my spare time driving it round at that speed.
However, there is a footnote. In about 1980 going into Chester Le Street from A167 (Pickhill area) just after passing Northern Bus Garage on Left hand side there was a clothing factory & I noticed an old van parked which was obviously used for storage, and one day they had moved it a little and it was one of Tom Liddle’s ERFs. It looked from a distance, not in bad condition. I told my dad and strange for him, as he was not nostalgic he said he would go & see if he could buy it and we could do it up. Talking we agreed if we got it, it would be dishonest to paint it in our livery and it would have to be repainted in Tom’s Livery (Tom sadly had passed away by then). How we ever could claim any costs through our advertising budget would have caused interest to our auditors, but they were such beautiful vans…. Sadly, it had been stripped and had no engine, gearbox, back axle & inside the cab had been vandalised, but how I wish we could have saved one, even though it had nothing to do with W.H.Williams.

Lewins Seddon.jpg

Lewins Seddon 2.jpg

Lewins line up.jpg

Lewins Bedford.jpg